Thinking back on my years of Genshin experience, I have a hard time remembering two male characters being high up on the DPS tier list at the same time.

The Meta and the chop respectively:

Liyue: Xiao and Zhongli (pre-forced buff)

Inazuma: Itto and Ayato

Sumeru: Alhaitham and Cyno

Fontaine: Neuvilette and Wriothesly

Natlan: Kinich and (I guess Ifa?)

Nodcrai: Flins and Varka (?)

I feel like if this pattern continues, Varka might actually be set up to fail.

I genuinely have a hard time believing they are going to dethrone Mauvika. That would require insane numbers for an Anemo DPS to beat a Pyro nuker.

If he is not stronger than Mauvika, that means he would probably share second place with Flins and Nefer. So three characters sitting at second place.

But looking at the recent treatment of male characters:

Kinich: no screen time, story-wise straight up irrelevant. Token male 5-star.

Ororon: niche kit, relevant for five minutes in the story..

Capitano: dead.

Ifa: born in a wheelchair.

Flins: gay. /j

Varka: comes in, says three lines, and goes offscreen whenever something important happens.

Illuga: shows up, says he is worried for Flins, then dips.

After the way Varka was not even present in the fight against Dottore… I don’t have high hopes for him not being our token disappointing male 5-star.

Flins being the first nod crai dps set the bar high for damage with minimal investment. Now going toe to toe with nefer i believe hoyo is gonna tank varka because they cant have male characters dominating meta post neuvilette for some reason.

And this sounds insane to say i know. But they literally nerfed Neuvilette JUST before releasing mualani. After not touching anything in his kit for almost a YEAR. (Now that we have a hydro catalyst,hp scaling dps unit arriving we simply must fix the older one which “coincidentally” is going to make him loose damage)

honestly after stooping that low before, i actually would not put that past them.

So in short:

They messed up making flins as strong as he is, now Varka could bite the dust for that.

And i really, really hope that i am wrong. But i am pretty sure they are going to give Varka either a horrible kit or outrageously low numbers. (Heck why not both while they at it?)

But all this is purely speculative on my part.
I think Hoyo messed up